Hal Ashby – Harold and Maude (1971)

27 april

8:30 Life and Times of Drazen Paskaljevic by  Chris Bianchi

8:45 harold and maude by Hal Ashby

In his second feature as a director after his Oscar-winning success as an editor, Hal Ashby complements Colin Higgins’ script (adapted by Higgins from his own student short) with an affectionately non-judgmental view of quirky behavior and a distaste for institutions of authority.

In their deft hands, Harold Chasen may be weird – but his mother and army general uncle are plain nuts. Paramount appeared nonplussed as to how to market the film, and it opened to scathing reviews and died a rapid first-run death, as few viewers seemed to care for the idea of a youth lusting after a grandmother.

But, caught up in a generational revolt of their own, college audiences responded passionately to the message of doing your own thing regardless of what church, state, and Mom say. Harold and Maude became the cult hit of the 1970s, reportedly playing in one Minneapolis theater for three straight years, with fans who claimed to have seen it 100 or more times.

Tierische Liebe AKA Animal Love by Ulrich Seidl

20:30   Taxi by Ian Schranz

20:45  Tierische Liebe

In conurbations where hundreds of thousands live alongside one another, in the era of a highly technological society, in which communication has never played such a significant role, man has become lonely. Disappointed by his fellow human beings, he turns to animals. Dogs and other domestic animals serve him as companions, life partners, cuddly objects and bedfellows.

Most of the characters appear either to be in a troubled relationship, or have recently come out of one. You have the austrochavs with the ferret, two old queens with a violent dog, the swingers, the former sexpot who reminisces over her love letters, a beggar with a rabbit, and a few more other examples from the underbelly of Austrian civilisation – as far from the tearooms of Vienna that we could possibly get. As a documentary, it certainly shows there is this side to Austria that Mozart could never have contemplated, and for that we thank Seidl yet again.

Matewan

7th April 2009

20:15h Nassa by Ken Burns

20:30h Matewan by John Sayles

Independent filmmaker John Sayles creates one of his more artistic works with this period feature about a volatile 1920s labor dispute in the town of Matewan, West Virginia. Matewan is a coal town where the local miners’ lives are controlled by the powerful Stone Mountain Coal Company. The company practically owns the town, reducing workers’ wages while raising prices at the company-owned supply and grocery. The citizens’ land and homes are not their own, and the future seems dim. When the coal company brings immigrants and minorities to Matewan as cheaper labor, union organizer Joe Kenehan(Chris Cooper) scours the town to unite all miners in a strike. As the crisis grows, strikers and their families are removed from their homes by two coal company mercenaries, and the situation heads toward a final shootout on Matewan’s main street. Sayles’ simple but telling screenplay brings to light the treatment of immigrants and minorities in the early 20th century South, and it draws sharp parallels between the Matewan labor battle and the Civil War some 50 years earlier.

with…Chris Cooper, Will Oldham, Elma Radnor, James Earl Jones…

Aki Kaurismäki – Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö AKA The Match Factory Girl (1990)

tuesday 31st march

68, st lucy street, valletta

8:15 infinite screen test by martin clark

8:30 the match factory girl by aki kaurismaki

Iris is a young Finnish girl whose life has no horizon. She works in a match factory and still lives at her parents’. She escapes by reading soppy love stories or by attending a dance. One night, she thinks she has found Prince Charming. But the latter reveals himself a scornful human being who has no consideration for her. Then, she is chased away by her parents and relies on her brother’s generosity to put her up. But Iris didn’t say her last word and she decides to prepare a plan to have a revenge on the ones who couldn’t love her.

In the nineteenth Century, Andersen, a Danish writer wrote a tale entitled “the little match girl”. Here, the film-maker Aki Kaurismäki kept certain elements of this tale to create in his own way, a sort of updated version. And it’s a much more austere one so much that it virtually evokes Robert Bresson’s cinema.

poster by adrian abela

La Caza

Kinemastik Film Club at 68, St Lucy Street, Valletta

24th March

20:15  Hunter by Edward Said

20:30 La Caza by Carlos Saura

La caza is an ugly piece of work with the visceral authenticity of a snuff movie. While the Hollywood film culture is driven by the Gun Drama, this is the only film I’ve ever seen that truly deserves to be in the genre. The four men are defined by their guns: Jose and Paco, vets, businessmen, uneasy friends, use double-barreled shotguns, their chambers sheathed in silver plating, the ornate scrolls like the new-found pedigree of their wealth. Luis, vet, the business partner of Jose and science fiction aficionado, has a sniper rifle, its telescopic site clearly designed for targeting humans, not rabbits… aliens, not Spaniards. And young Enrique is armed with his father’s pistol, a German Luger from the Civil War…. Like all exercises in human realism, the humour is in the bizarre, the madness in the detail. And these men are mad. When they arrive in the arid river valley and begin setting up camp, Luis tells Enrique: “Many died here — it’s a good place for killing.” In a metaphor for this valley of death, much of the rabbit population has been destroyed by myxomatosis, a disease introduced by humans to control the “rabbit invasion”.

Taken from http://www.culturecourt.com/F/Latin/LaCaza.htm

poster by Adrian Abela

http://adrianabela.blogspot.com/

Fishing with John

17th March

68, st lucy str, valletta

20:15 Minsi by Alex Vella Gera

20:30 Fishing with John by John Lurie

poster: Adrian Abela

In this unusual advanture John Lurie invites 5 guests to try and go through different quests. Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Dennis Hopper, Matt Dillon and William Defoe take to the water in search of adventure but usually end up with something else altogether. Discover how to catch fish using cheese and a pistol with Jim Jarmusch, let Tom Waits teach you new ways to store your catch, and build an ice fishing shanty with Willem Dafoe in these surreal, dryly witty outdoor escapades. Since Lurie has no expert knowledge of fishing, the interest is in the conversations between Lurie and the guests, all of whom are friends of Lurie. Nothing particularly unusual actually happens, but the show is edited and narrated in a way to suggest that Lurie and his guests are involved in dramatic and even supernatural adventures. One of the guests dies. So does Lurie. Others end up alive. So does Lurie.

Çetin Inanç – Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam AKA Turkish Star Wars (1982) Turkey

68

st lucy street,

valletta

tuesday, 10th february

8:15 brian belletic – discover hip hop

8:30 cetin inanc – dunyayi kurtaran adam AKA turkish star wars (1982) Turkey

…Nothing could possibly prepare you for the jaw-dropping insanity of “The Turkish Star Wars.” This film is not actually a scene-for-scene remake of the George Lucas landmark, although it pirated the special effects footage from the 1977 original and tacked it into a feverish nightmare of celluloid dementia which needs to be seen if only to prove how far the minds of lunatic filmmakers can run. Prepare yourself, because the only way to appreciate The Turkish Star Wars is to follow the storyline through its labyrinthine lunacy. Long ago in a Turkish-speaking galaxy far, far away, the universe is being imperiled by a quartet of evildoers: two bush-haired men wearing Mardi Gras costumes, a slutty babe dressed as Cleopatra, and a blue robot with an ambulance light on his head. Their fleet of spaceships go to war against the flying saucers of a heroic group of rebels, and for several minutes the screen is filled with F/X footage from a battered print of Star Wars. There’s no Luke Skywalker here, but instead we have two middle-aged space jockeys (Cuneyt Arkin and Ayetkin Akkaya) who are leading the rebel attack. Unfortunately, there was no budget for a spaceship set here, so the heroes are photographed in very tight close-ups while footage from Star Wars plays on a rear projection behind them.

by lyrnx

Bice skoro propast sveta

03.03.2009.

68, st lucy street, valletta

20:15h
Omar the Dark
by Slavko Vukanovic

20:30h
“Bice skoro propast sveta” by Aleksandar Petrovic

“Bice skoro propast sveta” is a film inspired by Dostoyevsky s “The
Possessed”, a contemporary news story and the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia. It was translated as “It rains on my village” although
literate translation is “The end of the world is coming”. It is
actually a song that the Srem Gypsy antecedents of Violent Femmes(crowd puller) sing in this film. One of the greatest Yugoslav directors, Aleksandar Petrovic, tells a story about a naive young swine-herd who
marries a mentally retarded girl, and then falls in love with a beautiful teacher – which has fatal results.

Le Cercle rouge

Jean-Pierre Melville (1970)

Master thief Corey (Alain Delon) is fresh out of prison. But instead of toeing the line of law-abiding freedom, he finds his steps leading back to the shadowy world of crime, crossing those of a notorious escapee (Gian Maria Volonté) and alcoholic ex-cop (Yves Montand). As the unlikely trio plots a heist against impossible odds, their trail is pursued by a relentless inspector (Bourvil), and fate seals their destinies. Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le cercle rouge combines honorable anti-heroes, coolly atmospheric cinematography, and breathtaking set pieces to create a masterpiece of crime cinema.

Tuesday, 24th February

20:15 David 39 by James Caddick
20:30 Le Cercle Rouge by Jean-Pierre Melville

68, St Lucy street, Valletta

suggested donation: 2 euro

membership: 10 euro

Haxan – Witchcraft Through The Ages

Kinemastik weekly film club is starting off on Tuesday 17th February at No 68 in St Lucy Street, Valletta.

17th Feb 2009

20:00 h  Minsi – Alex Vella Gera
20:30 h  Witchcraft Through The Ages

Haxan – Witchcraft Through The Ages (1968 ) by Benjamin Christensen

Haxan (1922)  is a Swedish/Danish film by Benjamin Christensen. The film was banned in the United States and heavily censored in other countries for what were considered at that time graphic depictions of torture, nudity, and sexual perversion. In 1968, an abbreviated version of the film (77 minutes as opposed to the original’s 104 minutes) was released, entitled Witchcraft Through The Ages. This version featured an eclectic jazz score by Daniel Humair (played by a quintet including Jean-Luc Ponty on violin and Daniel Humair on percussion) and dramatic narration by William S. Burroughs.

The suggested donation is 2 euro.
Kinemastik subscription for a year is 10 euro which brings you a free entrance to all our events.